


Team Player

by sperrywink



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), DCU
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Feelings, Gen, Spoilers, gray characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6250864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sperrywink/pseuds/sperrywink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One interpretation of Leonard Snart's thoughts during and between the episodes <b>Blood Ties</b> (1x3) and <b>Marooned</b> (1x7).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Player

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for all episodes between 1x3 and 1x7. I was especially motivated to delve into Leonard's thoughts during Blood Ties.

Leaving his old boyhood home, Leonard was waiting for something to shift inside him. For memories to fold and vanish, and new ones to take their place. For his sense of self to be rewritten. If his father didn’t go to prison, if he didn’t become a raging asshole, if he didn’t lay a hand on them, shouldn’t Leonard feel different? Be different? Be kinder, more caring, more compassionate, more… good. Just more?

But as he told Mick and Jax, he wasn’t. 

As they rode the jump ship back to the Waverider, he waited and hoped. If anyone had asked, he would have claimed that he wanted to change the past for Lisa’s sake. He loved her, and wanted her to have a happy childhood filled with laughter and love. But he was a liar only to others, not to himself. He hoped for a better childhood for both of them. He wanted to shed his cold skin, and be the man Barry Allen claimed he could be.

But that didn’t happen, and when he asked Gideon for the new timeline and was shown how his asshole father still went to prison, still ruined their lives, he could feel a bitter smile forcing its way onto his face. Of course history wasn’t done fucking with him yet. He never had that kind of luck, and he felt like a fool for believing it was possible in the first place.

Everything he had ever gotten in life, he had fought, lied, cheated, and stole for it. Usually all at the same time and against overwhelming odds. Apparently time travel wasn’t going to change that fact, or make it easy to make the past better. One simple heist wasn't going to be enough.

As their next mission to get Savage in 1986 went belly-up, and Mick, Stein, and Ray were all captured and put in the Russian Gulag, Leonard thought hard about who he was, and what he was doing with this crew. 

He and Mick had orbited each other as partners for thirty years or more. They had their ups and downs, but when push came to shove, they were always there for each other. He wasn't going to abandon him here and now in a Russian Gulag.

But even Ray and Stein were part of this motley crew he was finding a home with. Mick might be his main priority, but he wasn't going to let Sara take out Stein based on Rip's poor leadership and short-sighted decisions. If Leonard knew one thing about leading a team, it was that everyone would only be as loyal to you as you were to them. That was why he called them Rip's pawns. Rip didn't have loyalty to the team, he had loyalty to the mission.

Which made sense- the mission was essentially to save the people he loved, but unless Rip developed some connections to the team, and started valuing them, Leonard knew the team was going to fall apart fast.

Hell if the rest of the team didn’t start valuing each other too, it was the same result, since if they succeeded in the mission of stopping Savage, the only ones who would remember the old timeline would be the Time Council who would still consider them criminals. Everyone else would be blissfully ignorant as they lived through the new timeline. So none of them would be legends and there would be no glory. As the saying went, they would only be legends in their own minds.

And once the rest of them figured this out? If they weren’t in it together, there would be no saving the timeline.

But even knowing this, Leonard had grown and changed enough that he was starting to think differently, even if it wasn’t out of an innate goodness. He wanted this to work. Not for glory or goods, but for camaraderie. He was finding meaning in being a part of something bigger than himself or the next score. He believed in the team, and was enjoying working with intelligent and creative people. He was used to being the mastermind, so it was novel and refreshing to bounce ideas off the others, and have brilliant plans come to life that were only partly his.

Plus, he was having fun. Each journey gave him a chance to polish his skills, both in the assigned mission, and in whatever side jobs he snuck in there.

So he wasn't surprised when Star City 2046 had no appeal to him. He was a criminal, yes, but he operated best within organized society. If there were no rules, how could he break them? But especially now, when he was finding so much meaning in this time traveling journey, it felt like a pale second. He just wished Mick felt the same way.

But he didn't want to do it without his partner, so he dragged Mick back to the ship, and was paying for it now. First Mick was giving him the cold shoulder, and now this. Siding with time pirates was right up Mick’s alley, but Leonard had hoped that Mick would see what he saw in being a part of the team. That being here and now was better than anything they had done before. 

Leonard had always reined in Mick’s desire to see the world burn, but he was afraid Mick was finally out of his reach. Leonard stepped forward to stand between Mick and his pirates and the other team members. He looked back, and then forward. Removing his gun, he chose his side. 

He might not be good, but for better or worse, he _was_ a team player.


End file.
